


Everything is Changing

by Alexandria (heartfullofelves)



Series: X is for... [5]
Category: Torchwood
Genre: Angst, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Episode: s01e06 Countrycide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-07
Updated: 2015-02-07
Packaged: 2018-03-10 21:57:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3304850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartfullofelves/pseuds/Alexandria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After almost being cannibalised, it feels only natural to seek comfort in someone else. Four Torchwood members deal with the aftermath of the Brecon Beacons.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Everything is Changing

**Author's Note:**

> Yet another post-Countrycide fic. You know, every time I write “countryside” I always spell it “countrycide” and then realise what I’ve done and have to go back and change it. This one has been on my list of Torchwood fics to write since maybe July or August 2014, so it feels good to have finally written it, though I’ve changed the title at least twice since I first had the idea. I have a four-page document of Torchwood fics to write, but I add to it more often than I cross things off it! Too much inspiration and too little time…

_This ain't real, this ain't cool_   
_This ain't what I signed up to_   
_This ain't right, it's no good_   
_No good, oh_

_Everything is changing,_   
_And I've been here for too long_   
_Going through the same things_   
_I've been hurting too long, got to move on_   
_Say I, I can't do this anymore_   
_If everything is changing_   
_And I know, yeah you'll find it._

\- Sigma feat. Paloma Faith, _Changing_

 

Toshiko Sato has seen many disturbing and horrifying things in the years she’s been with Torchwood, but none of them measure up to this. She can cover up a murder without thinking twice about it, shoot an alien dead if necessary, deal with humans being manipulated by extraterrestrial tech, but _this_ has no comparison, and no explanation. A whole village of people capturing, killing, and cannibalising for no reason other than it makes them feel good almost makes her wish she were still in that UNIT cell with no communication with the outside world. If she didn’t have to work for Torchwood in order to get a clean slate, and if she didn’t owe Jack, she would beg to leave and be retconned. She wishes she could forget, but she can’t.

When she gets home afterwards, the first thing she does is jump in the shower and try and scrub the echo of the villagers’ touch out of her skin. She scrubs until her arms, legs, torso, and face are all red. It hurts, but that’s what it takes to get rid of the last remaining sensation of the cannibals’ hands on her. That’s what it takes for her to be able to not think about the disgust she felt when she found out who the real monsters were and the fear she felt for her and Ianto’s lives.

Once dressed in sweatpants and a t-shirt, she goes to the kitchen. It takes her a minute to be able to open her fridge, as she is reminded of the fridge in the cellar that she told Ianto not to open, wanting to protect him from the sight of bloody body parts. Once she does manage to open her own fridge-freezer, she takes out all the meat and throws it in a rubbish bag. That done, she doesn’t know what else to do. She should eat, as her body hasn’t had food in over twelve hours and she is feeling faint, but the thought of eating anything makes her want to vomit. Still, her body needs some nourishment, so she makes herself a cup of instant coffee.

She takes one sip and spits it back into the mug. She’s hooked on Ianto’s real coffee, and instant just won’t do. She sighs. She tips the contents of the mug down the sink and puts the kettle on for a cup of tea. You can never go wrong with tea, can you? she reasons.

But even the tea doesn’t taste right. She doesn’t notice that tears are running down her cheeks as she tips out her tea, goes into her bedroom to change into jeans, puts on her brown leather coat, and leaves her flat. She seeks out the person who always takes care of her and the rest of the team, the person who will know what she needs without her having to ask for it or even know herself what she needs. She seeks out Ianto.

* * *

Owen Harper joined Torchwood because he wanted to save people, but last night (or was it early this morning?) he couldn’t even save himself. He looked after Gwen, who’d been shot, but when the two of them got captured by the cannibals and put in the same room as Tosh and Ianto with the blood and human flesh and meat cleavers, he was helpless. He’s a doctor, meant to do whatever he can to save lives, and there he was, unable to do anything. The cannibals were too strong, too many, and he’d been close to giving up, to stopping fighting, when Jack crashed the tractor through the wall, the most dramatic entrance he’s ever seen, and started firing at the villagers, saving them all.

Alone in his flat after being dropped home, Owen has the need to break a few things. He throws a stupid vase on the floor. _Crash!_ He’s angry at himself for letting him and Gwen get caught by the cannibals. A dirty plate on the kitchen bench is his next victim. _Smash!_ He shouldn’t have needed saving by Captain Jack. A shot glass in the sink has the same fate. _Crash!_ Jack shouldn’t have taken them to the Welsh countryside and then sent them into a dangerous situation where they needed saving.

Then there’s the villagers themselves, the sick fuckers. He sweeps his arm over the table and sends everything onto the floor. _Smash, crash, smash!_ Who the hell were those people who felt that they needed to _eat_ other humans? He wishes that he’d been the one with the gun to shoot them all, or the one to sentence them to prison, because they deserve nothing less than what they got, and he’s the vengeful type.

When he was new to Torchwood, he was shown that there were beautiful things out there, that not all aliens were evil like the one that killed Katie, that they could use technology from other worlds and times to their own advantage. He’d begun to think that life wasn’t so bad, and then this happened. Now he’s back to square one, hating everything and everyone, including himself.

So when Gwen arrives at his door that night with a lost look in her eye, he lets her in, because he knows what he can do to save her. He feels no friendliness for her, and knows she thinks he’s a twat, and that’s what makes the sex so great. It’s desperate and fast and hard and he can forget about their jolly little trip to the countryside because he’s lost in her body and taking pleasure in hearing her scream his name. He fucks Gwen because he’s attracted to her, but also because she needs him right now. It doesn’t matter that they don’t like each other, because he’s a doctor, and he’ll do whatever he can to fix his patient.

* * *

Ianto Jones is no stranger to fear, but that didn’t make him any less scared last night or this morning. The first carcass, the feeling that they’d walked into a trap, searching for the SUV with Tosh and then wondering where she’d gone when she’d disappeared, being beaten up – _tenderised._ The word still haunts him – and almost having his throat slit; all of it made his heart race and his palms sweat and his lunch threaten to make itself known again. He’s seen two alien races destroy each other and kill hundreds of people at Canary Wharf, he’s seen his world go to shit before his girlfriend was shot down before his eyes, and still has the ability to be scared shitless when in a strange village or when about to be cannibalised.

He was seconds away from death today. He really thought that he was about to die. And maybe he could have handled that, maybe he wouldn’t have been so terrified of being killed, if he hadn’t known that once he was dead he would be _eaten_. But in the dark and musty cellar, he wanted to escape. And then in the house, in a room that looked and smelt like a butcher’s, he wanted to _live_.

He’s just finished changing his clothes when Tosh turns up. He presents her with a relieved smile, because her company is welcome now they’re not in a life or death situation. He invites her in and makes them a pot of tea, adding sugar to each cup. She takes hers with thanks and they sit at Ianto’s small kitchen table to drink their tea, avoiding each other’s eyes. What is there to say, after what they’ve been through? He can tell from the furrow of her brow and her hooded eyes that she’s remembering and processing, and he’s sure that his haunted thoughts are also written on his face for her to read, even though he usually keeps such a careful mask.

Fear and desperation and the need to remind themselves that they are still alive set in place the events that take place next. She stands up and takes his hand, and asks him to please lead her into the bedroom. So he does. She kisses him with chapped lips, and then she strips him with gentle care, mindful of his bruises. In turn, he removes her clothes with hands that should shake but don’t, and if they were a couple instead of just two colleagues, what they do next would be called making love. It helps him to forget about the cannibals, and it helps him, just the tiniest bit, to begin moving on from Lisa, and he’s more thankful to Tosh than he could say.

After she leaves, he steps in the shower and lets the water cascade over his battered and bruised body. He’s alive, he’s safe, and the cannibals are gone. He has to remind himself of that as he washes off sweat and Tosh’s scent and the smell of sex. He and Tosh are safe now. The villagers can’t hurt anyone else anymore. Justice will be served.

* * *

Gwen Cooper hasn’t been with Torchwood very long, and this experience almost turns her away from it. When she first started, she was amazed and awed by everything, but something like this is not what she signed up for. She signed up for saving the world and seeing things she’d never believed possible. Cannibalistic villagers in the countryside is not something she ever wanted to see, but now she can’t unsee it unless Jack retcons her again, and she doesn’t want to lose her memories, no matter how horrific they might be.

When she first started working for Torchwood, it was exciting, knowing that she was doing top secret work that she couldn’t share with anyone, not even Rhys. But now it’s getting to be too much. She needs to be able to talk to someone about all this, but she’s not allowed to. She gets home just after Rhys would have started work, and plants herself on the sofa, filling in time with silly television and superficial magazines until he gets home. When he does, late in the afternoon, she barely talks to him, instead putting on the telly, biting her fingernails as her eyes watch the screen but her mind doesn’t follow. She can’t tell her friends or family or boyfriend, and it’s eating away at her.

After an awkward, silent dinner, she tells Rhys that she has a work emergency, and leaves. There is no actual work emergency, for once, and if she weren’t in such a state she would be full of guilt right now, but she keeps going and drives to Owen’s flat. She knows what she needs right now, and Rhys can’t give it to her. But Owen can. And Owen does.

She gives herself to him, lets him take care of her, and it’s just how she imagined it would be. She does, in fact, come so hard and so fast that she forgets where she is. She screams his name as she climaxes with an intensity that terrifies her, and not just once. Oh no, she has multiple orgasms, and it’s unlike anything she has ever experienced. They don’t screw all night, but they do fuck for a good part of it, and this release is just what she needs to carry on. She doesn’t know what this is, what she is getting herself into with Owen, but she’s enjoyed tonight, and knows she wants it again.

When she’s covered in sweat and much too exhausted to move, she collapses beside Owen and lies between the rumpled sheets. She stares at the ceiling while he grunts and turns onto his side to go to sleep, and she can feel that everything is changing, that her world is spinning out of control. Torchwood has stopped being the fun, glamorous job she thought it would be. Now she sees it for what it is: draining and dark and just bloody awful. But it’s also addicting, and so she has no choice but to stay.


End file.
